Art of Relief
Feeling a sense of relief, something we all long for, brings with it a feeling of hope. It enables us to walk through the unseen tunnels into unknown landscapes as we carry on with our lives. We are all doing this every day. So when someone opens a door for us, or smiles, or gets us to relax and inadvertently take a gentle breath, we have a laugh and let down for a bit. If we learn to practice this now and then, we learn we can cultivate a life where, in the midst of the chaos, we can nurture our loving nature. And this brings a kind of relief and a quality of goodness.

Listening of Pure Movement
I began my studies of movement arts with some ballet and a lot of free movement, as a child. I studied western classical music all of my life, and continued in the study of contemporary movement. I also trained in schools of movement and music from Asian traditions, where the mover is both a musician in movement and a devotee of awareness. I became immersed in traditions where invocation of body-mind-spirit is found within dance, music and drama, and there I discovered my way into the Listening Awareness of Pure Movement.

Anyone who enjoys moving knows that it frees up the heart and the body follows. What I do is to break simple movements all the way down, learning how to move very easily through the joints, connecting the joint movements. This leads into fluid full body movement without trying to look a certain way.

We practice what I created, called BodyListening, a body-friendly way to explore free movement. The process begins with the body lying on the floor, while attuning to a quiet deep awareness, and then moving in the way the body wants to move. This kind of interior work, with space to move fully, coupled with the time to inquire within has been shown to bring resilience to those who are in the practice.

If indeed the body is the House of the Soul and Spirit and the container of the human experience, then the practice of Listening Inside of Movement allows the flow of stillness and motion to be brush strokes in the calligraphy of movement. The encompassing rhythms and melody of muscle are found inside of this ongoing discovery. The colors of emotion as doorways into deep feeling through the heart’s compass influence the way awareness reflects itself.

Sometimes, when I am moving, I find my body is the orchestra—bones, muscles, blood, pulse, with awareness as the conductor. And the audience—cosmos and nature at once ordinary and divine, present and instructive. What a symphony!

In Sickness and In Health
This is what people pledge when they are getting married. And this is what the work of our non-profit organization, The Storydancer Project, is about—to be with those in sickness and in health. And this is what our work inside of selves is about.

The work of the Storydancer Project is with the good tidings of human beings. When they are in sickness we work to balance the outlook, and when they are in health we work to increase the joy.

One of the places we work is called the basti (neighborhood in Delhi, India). Women come to the clinic for treatment of what they call cervical spondylitis. This is a kind of stiffness in the upper back and neck, which sets in and causes them to suffer in great pain most of the time. After we do a few slow exercises (that I have created), they began to laugh, we all begin to laugh, and this is itself a healing agent. Sometimes the agents of change are the people, themselves, and sometimes it is a moment we all share together.

In India, some of the people we work with use the word healing when they speak about the different systems I have developed to connect with people and to train others. I have not ever used that word for myself. Yet I can say that after people use these exercises, be they for general self care or for palliative cancer care, they very often feel a sense of relief, if only for a little while. A sense of calm abiding often arises through our work together.

When we add sense of humor and connection with each other, something happens. Often people say it is a magical feeling, because everyone is surprised to feel relief. Yet it is not magical in practice. I think the magic is the connection with other human beings, coupled with a humorous way of sharing the information, creating an atmosphere of ease.

Even in the poorest circumstances, I have seen ease unfold.

Love and the Art of Dance
The dance within is expressed through this vehicle of Being, as Rumi says so beautifully in a translation by Coleman Barks, “a breath-breathing human being.” The sunshine in the Art of The Dance is a great love in my life, and this work is one of the ways that can reach out, bring some relief from the stress of being human, and touch the wonder of life.

This Love connection happens again and again, and I learn that this is what connects the dots, this makes the doorway of the heart open. It is through the dance, at one time the dance being taken away due to physical illness and then given back over a long period of time, that I found within myself these precious and easy-to-do self-care exercises and movement practices that are now helping others feel a sense of freedom and relief. I have been telling the people we work with that movement is medicine. This movement is not a cure for the problem, but if you explore this every day for a moment now and then, it will help.

Through the kindnesses of my mentors who have pushed me to practice my art, and cultivate heart awareness, and to become a better person, I hope these gems can help others to feel better in the midst of whatever circumstances we may find ourselves.

The Art of Dance is also about the way we feel inside of musical rhythmic structures. Being a musician, I enjoy the music of movement. It gives people a chance to explore different ways of moving. Rhythm is like a container, for example, a four-beat rhythm holds the space in a different way than three beats.

In the dream house of my spirit I learned about the dance. My feet taught me love of rhythm My mind was beautifully zenith My heart opened itself from the bones

When I dance I notice the evaporation of what is in my way, and my way is The Great Way

In the Basti Nizamuddin, a primarily Muslim community filled with many smaller “villages,” or areas of the most poor, The Storydancer Project collaborates with The Hope Project Charitable Trust. The Hope Project is located around the tombs of very well-known Sufi mystics. The area is named for the revered saint and servant of the poor, Nizamuddin Auliya. Here, we partner with the Hope Project to bring TSP Everyday Self-Care Exercise Programs to women and girls who otherwise have had no experience of how good it feels to move in a healthy way.

This marginalized community is now seeing the fruits of our yearly ongoing programs: more than 50 women have been trained, bringing Self-Care to every part of the Basti. From one-on-one sessions in the Health Clinic, to on-site visits with women of the area’s inner villages, the trained facilitators join with Zuleikha to share stress relief and offer a new kind of experiential health education to this community. In the Girls Non-Formal School of the Hope Project, the TSP exercises now comprise the morning exercise program for the students, serving as a model of joy and self-care that can help prevent chronic problems from developing.

TSP Everyday Self-Care is ‘medicine’ for fragmented times—helping to recharge the body, energize the mind, and make space for the heart.

I am in Delhi, working away. It is pretty amazing, and this year, I can tell that some kind of groundwork is present; I don’t have to introduce the whole thing again and again. The poor who are rich, and enriched, the colors of the cloth, the light in the eyes—all these things happen when we step into the body, and find our way home to the heart.

The different branches on the tree of self-care grow out of the need in the moment. When I go into the tiny home of a woman in the Basti who has several children and no time, then we do exercises like the “Opposite Push and Stretch.” She gets more energy, and smiles and laughter arise.

These are ancient ideas, in a new package. The need is greater than ever. How to tune in, in the midst of the clamor of everyday life? And it is getting louder.

Friday, March 10, 2017 – A Kind of Communion

Parveen, a Hope Project social worker who works in the Health Clinic, has been taking me inside of homes in the Basti community to work directly with the women. My esteemed mentor said it was good to “selflessly serve the poor.” Somehow, it has come to pass that I find myself here working here with these amazing women. When I write that, it seems sad, to think of “poor women.” It is anything but sad! Actually these visits are highlights among many of my days here in Nizamuddin Basti. Often when I write, I am overwhelmed at the honor it is to serve in such a way.

We go into a home where nine people sleep on pads rolled out on cement during the night, and rolled up for free space during the day. Sometimes there is running water, sometimes not. Parveen and I share the exercises with the women. During our session, the women become bright-eyed. We laugh, and they say that they feel some relief from the everyday back pain and shoulder/neck pain. It’s a kind of communion. For that moment in that house with these people, there is a connection that supersedes everything.

I have been engaged in this process for some time. It takes time. Now, when I walk around this area, women often look at me, and say “…exercise?” By now I know that when a woman in the greater community says this to me, it means she has some problem and has come to understand that exercise may help. This is a sign of progress.

Saturday, March 18, 2017 – Women Caring for Women

Yesterday I was standing in the room where the Micro-finance women’s Self-Help Groups meet at the entrance to the Hope Project. A woman walks into the room. She looks at me and asks, “Zuleikha?” I nod. In India there are different kinds of nodding for different kinds of answers. In the west we nod up and down. In India, they nod side to side one time, two times, many times fast, half a nod; all of these things have different meanings when used in conversations, a kind of unspoken shorthand. I nod yes.

She then asks, “exercise?” So I ask her in Hindi, “What is the problem?” She makes a face of pain and points to the area at the top of the shoulder, connecting to the neck, “cer-veye-acle.” (Here it is pronounced with an “eye” sound, and in four syllables). “Ah,” I say, which implies that I understand. Then she shows the pathway from the shoulders, down the arms.

I recognize the pathway of this pain, and show her right on the spot something she can do. In less than a minute, she is smiling. I explain that she can do this anytime and daily and that it doesn’t matter if your stomach is empty or full.

The other women staff members in the room go on explaining the finer details to her, and it is just great—they understand and can carry on. Soon everyone is talking at the same time at a highly-pitched volume, very excited to explain everything to this woman, and she is talking back, asking questions, and they are all going back and forth and everyone is quite happy. This is sustainability in action, this is women caring for women. This is the Storydancer Project at work.

Sunday, March 19, 2017 – Relief from the Stress of Being Human

Circumstances have been teaching me to adapt myself to “what is,” right in the moment. This makes the impossible not only possible, but more fun! I have been taken in, and fed and served many cups of chai and have had so much kindness shown to me—I feel like sharing what I am able to is the least I can do!

Some days I ask myself, is love enough? I mean to say, is it enough to share love with human beings? I have not the means to give everyone food or running water or shoes or clothes. Yet after the stress diminishes somewhat through moving, it is this Loving feeling that gets communicated and, in sharing it, we all feel much better.

This Love connection happens again and again, and I learn that this is what connects the dots in my life, this makes the doorway of the heart open. It is through the dance, then the dance being taken away due to physical illness, and the dance being given back, over a long period of time, that I found within myself these precious and easy-to-do self-care exercises and movement practices that are now helping others feel a sense of freedom and relief. I have been telling the people we work with, “exercise is medicine,” and “these exercises are not a cure for the problem, but if you do them every day for a moment now and then, it will help.”

Through the kindnesses of my mentors who have pushed me to practice my art, and cultivate heart awareness, and to become a better person, I hope these gems can help others to feel better in the midst of whatever circumstances we may find ourselves. The sunshine in the Art of The Dance is a great Love in my life, and this work is one of the ways that can reach out, bring some relief from the stress of being human, and touch the wonder of life.

Well, Women’s Day over here was outrageous! Four of us, women’s micro-finance group leaders from the SHG (Self-Help Groups at Hope Project), took two bicycle rickshaws to another part of the area I work with women—another slum area. It was terrifyingly hilarious: the driver was going so fast down the hill so he wouldn’t have to work as hard to go up again, and we were yelling at him and laughing at the same time. It took about 15 minutes to get there, yet it is still within the SHG area. So big, and so many people.

When we got to the celebration, it turned out I was one of the guests of honor, and had to give a talk. Everything here is quite formal in the way things flow. Poor or rich, there are ways things should be done, and everyone knows them; the proper manner of greeting, serving water immediately, welcoming, talking, serving food, a ‘vote of thanks,’ giving a talk when asked. Everyone can do this; it is just how they do it—off-the-top, kind of, of life, with mobile selfies and recordings all along the way. A roomful of about 50-75 women, all dressed in saris and pants and tops. Since it was a celebration, they were in vibrant color—just beautiful.

I gave a talk about women taking care of ourselves, and how it works: women-families-communities-world. The organizers and president supervisors of this group were nodding yes, and thanked me for bringing this noble work to them. This is the group that is running the early childhood schools in all of these places. It is a government organization, which has its pros and cons, but the women who run it are just powerful and amazing. The current supervisor/president turned to me and said that she is overseeing over 200 centers. Can you imagine?! So much energy. Then we all did exercises and laughed a lot. One of the other organizers talked about how women are coming together to fight for our rights. Then, surprisingly, another of the organizers sang “We Shall Overcome” in Hindi—all the verses—with English in between. Everyone sang! So moving.

Then they asked me to sing, so I sang a call-and-response song I have made that the women really like, and they sang with gusto. It has no words, just “la la la”, and a good melody, and then I added a set of words in Urdu, which says, “we shall see each other again, god willing.” Everyone loved it. Then one of the women sang ghazal poetry, and all the women sang in response to each line. It was basically off-the-charts amazing, funny, huge talking all the time, and laughing…

We ate, took photos of each other, and ate more, and took more photos. It was just grand. Poor women, who are wealthy of spirit, eyes shining, and heads nodding. So uplifting.

On the way back, we took a new battery-run cart, which ran out of charge. The guy called his cousin and swapped carts, all the midst of huge traffic—really!

Love and Happy Women’s Day. May we be joining hands around the world to support and protect the vulnerability that is beautiful, and the strength that is natural.

Zuleikha with young mothers of the Hope Project Crèche program practicing wellness exercises before work

TSP at HOPE PROJECT 2016 Self-Care for the Whole Community – There are now 50 Hope Project trainers learning TSP’s Take A Minute™ exercises for Self-Care and how to teach them! Every aspect of this community is benefiting, from tiny nursery school children, to teenagers, vocational students, community women and clinic outpatients. We are so grateful for our partnership with the Hope Project Charitable Trust!

This first picture above is of a new group of about 25 young mothers. They are domestic workers who place their little children in the Hope Project Crèche while they work. The Crèche Director, Rajvanti, and I got inspired to start a self-care program with them, once a week, before work. They really enjoy the exercises—most of the women have never done anything like this.

Sharing an exuberant Push & Stretch with the girls of the Non-Formal School

The Girls Non-Formal School – Girls Lead!

I go to the school assembly program in the mornings at 8:00, and have chosen several girls to stand in front and lead the exercises. The teachers take part as they are inspired to, coach the girls and cheer them on.

Fun exercise with youth attending the evening Support Classes

Children’s Support Classes and Kindergarten & Nursery Classes

Four Support Class teachers have successfully completed the Take A Minute™ Training. They understand how to lead, and how to adapt the sessions to the circumstances of the day. 60 plus children are benefiting.

Kindergartners enjoying a moment of group movement

Four kindergarten and nursery school teachers in training here are learning to implement these simple and fun exercises in their classrooms for learning readiness throughout the day.

Self-Help Group

Community Women

This year there are two community groups with which we have been working. The first is SHG, the 79 Self Help Groups, women’s micro-finance groups consisting of 1000 women total, who practice the self-care exercises regularly.

I feel that the community women are accepting the concept of ‘taking a minute’ for themselves, for their lives and well being. It is exhilarating to see it take hold.

Exercising outside with community women and children

The second group is community women I’ve connected to through the social workers of the health clinic. I have been going out every week to a new part of the community, and sharing exercises. The women are very poor, and for most, it is the first time they have done an exercise. We laugh a lot, meeting outside, sometimes amidst clotheslines and overhead electric wires reaching every which way. Children come and join. This year, after so many trials of different ways of entering, we are now really inside the community. It is a wonderful feeling.

A joyful reach

The Outpatient Health Clinic

TSP’s collaboration with Dr. Luna, the Hope Project Outpatient Doctor, continues this year, allowing me to see many of her patients regularly (10-20 per week). Women, and men now, come in for help with cervical spondylitis, back pain, fat-shedding exercises, and overall wellness.

Zuleikha bringing pain-relieving exercises to patients at the Outpatient Clinic

KALPATARU UPDATE – TSP/New Light collaboration, Kalpataru – Safe Spaces for Sex-Trafficked Women program, coming up in a few days in Bengal and Jharkhand, India, is featured on Razoo, our crowdfunding site:

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“This program is a gift of joy to women who have absolutely nothing.” – Urmi Basu

At no point in history have more people been enslaved than are currently forced into labor and the sex trade by human traffickers. Women and girls comprise 98% of all those trafficked into forced prostitution. Urmi Basu, Founder/Director of New Light, Kolkata, India, and Zuleikha, Founder/Director of The Storydancer Project, have collaborated to create Kalpataru—a groundbreaking restorative program for women trafficked in the sex trade.

OTHER NEWS from TSP/ZULEIKHA – CANSUPPORT’s ANNUAL WALK FOR LIFE

Sunday, January 31, Delhi came together at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium for CanSupport’s 9th Annual Walk For Life: Stride Against Cancer. TSP/Zuleikha participated in performances and self-care demonstrations in solidarity with CanSupport’s amazing work to help people with cancer and their loved ones. TSP is humbled and honored to count CanSupport among our partnering organizations.

“Dear Zuleikha: What you bring to CanSupport is priceless, thank you for being around year after year.” – Walk for Life organizers

Zuleikha dancing her offering to cancer patients, friends and families worldwide at Walk for Life: “May All Beings Live in Joy!”

Indian Saints, School Days and Blue Jeans
An Impromptu Lesson ~ Hope Project January 2016

The other day I was conducting singing class/rehearsal for the older girls of the Girls Non-Formal School in the Hope Project. This Project is based in the Nizamuddin Basti, inside of the vast city of Delhi. There are many ‘bastis’ (village communities) inside of Delhi. Many, many, many!

The Hope Project is located next to the ‘Dargah’ (tomb) of the Sufi Mystic, Hazrat Inayat Khan. He was a spiritual teacher and wonderful musician who brought the teachings of Spiritual Unity through Sufism to the Western World in the early 1900s. Every year, his ‘Urs,’ or the anniversary of his passing, is celebrated on Feb 5. The children in the projects around his Dargah give an enlivening performance, and the girls I work with in the Girls Non-Formal School at the Hope Project are part of this event.

This year the girls have learned one of my songs composed to the English words of the great woman saint from India, Anandamayi Ma. She lived until the mid 1970s and is still very well loved by people in different religious groups all over India.

She says:“How much more time will you spend at a wayside inn?Don’t you want to come home?One is the wanderer, exile, and homecoming.The universe is the realm of the Divine.Great Mother of the World, deliver us home.Don’t you want to come home?”
– Anandamayi Ma

In between practicing, we Take A Minute™ using the exercises I have developed, to energize and refresh the body and mind after sitting. We also talk about various things together, the girls and I. It is good to break up activities with different kinds of learning. Yesterday, I asked them about clothing they like to wear when school is over. In India all students wear uniforms to school. I asked them if they liked wearing jeans. Some were enthusiastic, “Yes!” eyes shining. Some said, “No,” shaking their heads, and telling me they liked the more traditional ‘suit’—the big pants with the long kurta, or Indian shirt.

I love fabric and the way we can use it to express our feelings with color, texture and shape. We started talking about jeans. It became an English, History, and Fashion lesson; English Conversation, which they study, and the history of jeans. Since Levis were first made in the city of my birth and life, and since my father was, for a time, a cowboy rancher, I found myself telling about how jeans were originally made for working men, and how their popularity had spread. I found myself telling about the World Wars and women in the West needing to change from dresses to pants, so they could work, when the men went to war.

It was an extremely interesting morning, and the song is sounding better and better!

March 2015
This year our partnership with The Hope Project in the Nizamuddin Basti, Delhi, India, includes ongoing work with the community women’s Self Help Groups, training for the Girls Non-Formal School, sessions in the Health Clinic, and regular work with the Mobile Health Unit.

We are seeing results of the Core Wellness Exercise idea taking root here along with the Master Trainers program. The women being trained are beginning to understand how to teach the exercises and which exercises help for which problems. The community is beginning to see the benefits. This is really a big deal in a place like this, where self-care is not even a notion in the list of priorities.

Anyone who enjoys moving knows that it ‘frees up the heart’ and the body follows. What I have been doing here is to break simple movements all the way down to how to move very easily through the joints, connecting the joint movements. This leads into fluid full body movement without trying to look a certain way.

When we add sense of humor and connection with each other, something happens. Often people say it is a magical feeling, because everyone is surprised to feel relief. Yet it is not magical in practice. I think the magic is the connection with other human beings, coupled with a humorous way of sharing the information, creating an atmosphere of ease.

CanSupport’s 8th Walk For Life—for those in remission, those living with cancer, and those honored ones who have left—is a miraculous event, and this year I was asked to perform! What an honor. Through the partnership of TSP with CanSupport, I work with so many of the people who were celebrated and remembered, as well as all the doctors, nurses, counselors, and office staff.

Check out the slide show

I was inspired to create a costume with the CanSupport bags, and it worked out amazingly well. The Cutting and Tailoring teacher at the Hope Project, one of our other partnering organizations, helped to sew this. All the women were looking at me very strangely, wondering what in the world I would do with all of these bags. When I modeled it for them, they were laughing and saying “oh, very good!”When I got on stage, I realized that the colors of the day were blue, yellow and red, and that somehow those were the colors I had chosen to wear.

January 5, 2015 - First Meeting of 2015 with Hope Project Director and Staff in Delhi, India.

Samiur Rahman, the executive director, is wonderful. He is able to to decipher each person’s code to really understand how they would like to see the Core Wellness work take place. Each woman in the meeting has her own expression and is listened to.

I am excited, as what we are planning this year will catapult us into participating in the bigger picture of this community. Here, many families are living in one room with all the children, and often no running water. To see a woman experience relief of stress and body pain through stretching and moving in a simple way is its own work of art, and a privilege.

Tomorrow I will go to CanSupport where we work with palliative cancer patients, their families, and the Home Care Teams to begin scheduling this year’s expanded programs. Will keep you posted! ~ Zuleikha

Mountains of garbage

January 8, 2015 - Boarding the Joy Train

Today, we were visiting a ‘village’ inside of the vast city of Delhi, with the Hope Project’s Mobile Health Unit. As you can see, it is built under mountains of garbage…I will be going here every week to work with the women’s groups and children’s support classes. Here we go, it starts again—the joy train!

GERMANY – Arriving into a Hanover, Germany, in August, I heard the news that Europe had been having the most rain in 100 years. I actually experienced this everywhere I went this summer. Peaches were delicious, though some people were picking them and letting them ripen indoors because everything was so wet.

I first stayed in the village of Heckenbeck. There is a seminar house in Heckenbeck with a theater that is always booked. This village is a very creative place, and they present many interesting drama works, music and dance performances, and children’s works as well. I had a wonderful concert there.

Afterwards the director of the theater and seminar house called me back to the stage and presented me with a bottle of something only found in this place, a very unique non-alcoholic apple cider, pressed in a special way that makes it the ‘champagne’ of apples and a specialty of the region.

The group who gathered for the seminar were uniquely interesting as well: therapists, scientists, teachers, one climate change expert, people who love to dance, people who used to dance, caregivers of Alzheimers’ patients, and some people who have been working with me for a long time.

We practiced what I created, called ‘BodyListening,’ a body-friendly way to explore free movement. The process begins with the body lying on the floor, while attuning to a quiet deep awareness, and then moving in the way the body wants to move. This kind of interior work, with space to move fully, coupled with the time to inquire within has been shown to bring resilience to those who are in the practice.

For several days we had the good luck to eat outside in the garden, simple style-soup, fresh German bread and cheese, and the fruits of the summer.

In the afternoons we concentrated on working in rhythm, and learned about the way we feel inside of musical rhythmic structures. Being a musician, I enjoy the music of movement. It gives people a chance to explore different ways of moving. Rhythm is like a ‘container,’ a four-beat rhythm holds the space in a different way than three beats, for example.

Participants report that one of the outcomes of the seminar is a feeling of expansion of being, both physically and with awareness. Some people stay for more in depth private work. I love sharing this kind of space with people. It gives a place for our daily struggles to be explored amidst the spaciousness of freedom and wonder.

I learned that in the north of Germany, the ancient way that people built homes, with adobe, or mud and straw, was very similar to New Mexico. I saw some spectacular and yet simple homes, both large and small, that people had built themselves. We ate wonderful salad vegetables, fresh from their gardens.

SWITZERLAND – Moving then to the Italian Swiss Alps, I arrived once again, as I have for many years, at the Zenith Institute.

This is a camp high in the mountains, where each summer the place is built up, with tents, a main big tent, seminar tents, and tenting for participants. I stay in a shed-style house with other teachers a bit below the main tent area. We have lots of rain jokes here, and they have a pile of French rubber mountain boots, which I usually have to borrow at least once each summer. This year I wore them the whole time.

The main tent is very large, and it is here that the classes take place. On a warm day you can open the side panels, and see the breathtaking views of what look like the European Himalayas, the Alps.

It is in this high mountain atmosphere that I have had the good fortune to lead experimental movement based in the presence of nature–divine and exquisite. Sometimes we go outside and work in the mountains, studying the way our beings feel inside of the body. Between earth and the sky, we explore the meeting of the physical with deep awareness, in expression. Learning from the way a tree is rooted, reaching into the sky, and then taking that lesson into exploration.

Often we work inside of the beautiful wood floored main tent. If it is cold, the staff light the gas heaters which when wearing layers helps to keep us warm. This year because of the dampness, we had to cultivate a lot of humor to continue.

The subject of humor is a constant lesson in my life, and one that comes in very handy. As my good friend Wavy Gravy used to say to kids when we worked together at Camp Winnarainbow, “If you don’t have a sense of humor, it’s just not funny!’

SANTA FE, NM – The autumn equinox is around the corner, and so is my upcoming concert with friend and violinist extraordinaire, Tracy Silverman. We have been wanting to artistically collaborate for some time.

The special live concert filming event will enable us to begin a work called The Aurora Project. We will be able to both perform together and work with groups of young people challenged by life’s circumstances, around the U.S.

I first met Tracy when he was performing with Terry Riley, a great contemporary composer of music in our time, with a heart in North Indian classical music as well as music in the Western world. Some years ago, I traveled and performed with Terry and Tracy and other highly skilled and wonderful musicians in Norway and that’s when Tracy and I began to talk about working together.

We both work with young people, and feel very strongly about carrying the joy of music, movement, and freedom into the ever-changing world.

Please feel free to let your friends know about this work and let us know if you are interested in bringing seminars or performances to your communities.

Don’t forget to Take A Minute™ for yourself as the busyness of life speeds into autumn.
Be Well,
Zuleikha

When The Storydancer Project came into partnership with the Kolkata-based organization, New Light, (www.newlightindia.org) under the directorship of a remarkable woman, Urmi Basu, we began to work with the daughters of sex workers. We have done several kinds of seminars and trainings, and slowly, many girls are having an opportunity to explore what we call “Core Wellness and Movement Arts.”

Last year, I began to wonder about how to reach out to the mothers of the New Light girls. Urmi and I discussed this, and as you may recall, we did a small, successful pilot training program for some of the mothers. This year, the work with ‘the Mothers’ has been very much in our hearts and minds. When Urmi and I met in USA to plan the work of TSP in Kolkata, we had the idea to do a workshop with more of these women, who have been, or still are, sex workers. I am so very happy and thrilled to share this news: The Storydancer Project in partnership with New Light has just completed the first part of a very new kind of program with the Mothers, exploring creativity, restoration, health, and self expression.

Core Wellness & Movement Arts with ‘the Mothers’

smiles across the floor

putting clay masks on each other

how does it look?

Last week I went with Urmi to her presentation and panel discussion at a well-known business college here in Kolkata. The subject was: Women Entrepreneurs, “Women in the Metro, Breaking the Glass Ceiling.” Urmi gave a stirring talk about trafficking, New Light’s work with women, the children of the sex workers, and women in the world of business. I was then introduced and had a chance to give a brief talk about our bodies and wellness, and to do an exercise with the primarily female audience. Everyone was surprised to get up to ‘Take A Minute,’ and we all had a good laugh, feeling relief after sitting for such a long time.

Meeting with the Heritage Group of Institutions

Heritage conference – interactive panel discussion

Along with the new program for the Mothers, I have the honor to continue the work with the high school/college girls at Sonar Tori, the house where the girls live together, cook for each other, share the chores, and learn how to live in community. It is a wonderful place. We have had several movement seminars, including deep discussions about where they have come from, their opportunities, and how they feel after moving together in our seminar. Afterward, we’ve shared the delicious lunches that they have prepared themselves.

young women of Sonar Tori

As I get ready to go out into the day, I am again filled with hope, remembering this quote from Rumi:

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”

Because of your continued generosity and support, we are indeed reaching those in the world who have not been able to receive the precious gifts of simple joy through wellness and exercise. Please share this blog with your friends, that the circle of wellness may continue to reach women, girls, children and families challenged by life’s circumstances.

I will return to USA at the end of March, and am inspired to share about this work, through performance, speaking, and slide shows. Please write to us at projectdirector@storydancer.com, at FB at The Storydancer Project or Storydancer Zuleikha, or by snail mail to PO Box 31099 Santa Fe, NM 87594.

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LISTEN to ZULEIKHA’S MUSIC

BIOGRAPHY

International performer and educator ZULEIKHA is renowned world wide for her innovative and transformative performances and self-care work in movement arts. Zuleikha's extensive performance and teaching background in dance, music, meditation and healing arts have shaped her profound and enlivening movement expression. The scope of her work ranges from Rumi Concert collaborations with poet Coleman Barks and world musicians, to self-care and wellness work through her international non-profit organization, The Storydancer Project. ZULEIKHA brings programs for greater health, resilience and joy to women, children and families facing challenging life circumstances. Her Take a Minute™ Everyday Self-Care Exercise and Body Listening Movement Arts are being used worldwide to help people improve wellness and create empowered responses to chronic stress and trauma. She is the recipient of humanitarian awards honoring her work in the world promoting positive personal and social change. thestorydancerproject.org

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